A new study from the Ontario College of Family Physicians has found that 2.2 million of the 14 million residents of Canada’s largest and wealthiest province have no family doctor. The finding is a major indictment of the for-profit or fee-for-service model that is now being promoted as the go-to model for Ontario’s surgeries by the province’s conservative government.

“The number of unattached patients is growing across the province and region,” says Steve Gray, chief executive officer of Medical Associates of Port Perry. “The wait list at Medical Associates has never been so high and it will only grow further as our family physicians retire.”

According to the Ontario College study, over forty thousand Torontonians, five thousand Mississauga residents, and many more across the province lack access to a regular physician. Those lacking a family physician typically delay necessary follow-ups on serious health problems, resulting in these problems becoming markedly worse. This, in turn, places further pressures on other areas of the provincial health care system — especially Ontario’s overwhelmed emergency departments.